Politics
Joe Biden: "There isn't a Republican Party"
Vice President Biden laments the disorganized state of the Republican Party, saying Democrats would benefit from having a viable negotiating part...
Posted on 02/14/2014 8:55:19 PM PST by neverdem
Just days after warning his party that it will lose its electoral grip on Texas if it doesn’t broaden its appeal, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., offered an even more dire prediction on Thursday: Forget losing Texas – the GOP might never win a presidential election again if it doesn’t change its tune.
“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime…unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party,” Paul said during an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck that aired Thursday. “And it has to be a transformation. Not a little tweaking at the edges.”
The Kentucky Republican said the GOP needs to do a better job of tailoring specific messages to specific groups.
With young people, he said, he would stress an opposition to excessive government surveillance and a respect for personal privacy. And among minority communities, he said, a message of criminal justice reform – including changes to the “war on drugs” and sentencing laws – would resonate.
“There are many people who are open among all these disaffected groups, who really aren’t steadfast supporters of Obama or an ideology,” he explained. “I think they’re open to listening, but we have to have a better message and a better presentation of it.”
Paul said he welcomes a robust debate within the party about how to move forward.
“There is a struggle going on within the Republican Party,” he said. “I tell people it’s not new, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m proud of the fact that there is a struggle. And I will struggle to make the Republican Party a different party, a bigger party, a more diverse party, and a party that can win national elections again.”
And he compared this new attempt to rejuvenate the GOP to Ronald Reagan’s own effort to refashion the party after Watergate, when he challenged then-President Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976.
“Everybody told Reagan to sit back and shut up,” Paul recalled. “They told him it wasn’t his time, and it wasn’t going to be his time. The establishment wanted Ford…It was bitterly fought, but in the end, Reagan won and the party became a better place, at least for a while. We need to have that debate again, and we need to be a bigger, stronger party.”
It may surprise Paul to hear that even some Democrats are hoping the Republican Party can resuscitate itself.
Vice President Biden told the House Democratic caucus at a policy conference on Friday that Democrats should hope Republicans can pull themselves together – if only for the sake of having a viable negotiating partner.
“There isn’t a Republican party,” he lamented. “I wish there were, I wish there was a Republican party. I wish there was one person we could sit across the table from and make a deal and make the compromise and know when you got up from the table that the deal was done.”
“All you had to do was look at their response to the State of the Union, what were there, three or four?” he added. “I think we should get a little focused here, let's get a little focused.”
Lets hope we can hold on until christ returns..but it may need to fall to bring about God’s changes.
The GOPe aren’t interested in winning. Their goal is to stop the conservatives so the Democrats can finish transforming our country.
He happens to be right in that the gop faction of the uniparty is not doing well and is unlikely to win nationally. I think this will become very apparent this coming November.
The base for the gop faction, generally speaking, is aging. Fewer and fewer of it’s steadfast supporters from even 5 years ago can be bothered to show up to vote. We’re seeing this in VA right now and saw it in the November elections. The oft cited excuse for the gop failures in the last election was that the population of the People’s Republic of Northern Virginia is growing and coming to dominate. While that’s true, it’s not happening overnight and it doesn’t explain the fairly sudden shift we’re seeing toward the ‘rat faction here in VA in spite of nationally unpopular measures like deathcare and a notso hotso economy. The former supporters of the gop faction have either switched teams or are not showing up.
Whether what Rand is suggesting is a “solution” is highly debatable. I believe the gop faction has jumped the shark, and having it go the way of the whigs would be a good thing. Whatever came to replace the gop faction of the uniparty would likely be an improvement.
“Knock it off, Rand. You are not ‘16 material but I’ll bet you will be the spoiler your father was.”
And if the gop faction of the uniparty nominates someone like jabba the christie or paul ryan, I’ll be pleased to see him play the spoiler.
Which is another way of saying that America is allowing too many freeloading, Marxist foreigners into the country who are dependent upon the money stolen from U.S. taxpayers for their survival.
Paul is right. The future of the GOP lies with Cruz, Lee and Palin.
The country club elite tenaciously hangs on at all cost, yelping about their coming demise to Obama himself, under the tender ministrations of Karl Rove, resisting the flood of the conservative unwashed.Soon that flood will be irresistable, and the treason of men like Boehner will be intolerable.Who do you think remains silent while Obama sicks the IRS on conservative charities....Rube Goldberg?Boehner anmd Rove were in on it, which is why Obama is so smug.
“One of the few things I agree with regarding Rand Paul.”...
Same here. The repubs and rhino’s need to get their act together or they are going to be history. It is very possible the Tea Party or some other politically inspired group will replace them and I do not see that as being a difficult task by any means. The repubs are “ripe” for replacement.
Wrong. Obama's promise of a "backdoor route to gun control" gave us Fast and Furious.
Rand Paul might say "secure the border first" when speaking to American audiences, but he's all for open borders when speaking to La Raza.
Notice how PAul omitted his embrace of illegal alien amnesty during his Beck talk, which he expressed in his TX speech. He is a such a snake.
Well I’m okay with all that but how about trying reach the republican base (6 million) who sat home in 2012. That would go a long way toward a 2016 victory.
That libertarian streak of Rand Paul’s we all were concerned about is coming to full light now. I don’t know about him. He wants the party to water itself down even more it seems.
Thank you for making that point again. People seem to forget that it was conservatives who stayed home that doomed Romney. He won big time with the independents over the president.
...The Republican Party must embrace more legal immigration.[Posted on 03/19/2013 7:04:07 AM PDT by Perdogg]
Unfortunately, like many of the major debates in Washington, immigration has become a stalemate-where both sides are imprisoned by their own rhetoric or attachment to sacred cows that prevent the possibility of a balanced solution.
Immigration Reform will not occur until Conservative Republicans, like myself, become part of the solution. I am here today to begin that conversation.
Let's start that conversation by acknowledging we aren't going to deport 12 million illegal immigrants.
If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you...
This is where prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into being taxpaying members of society.
Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers.12 million more people assimilating into society. 12 million more people being productive contributors.
Latinos, should be a natural constituency for the party, Paul argued, but "Republicans have pushed them away with harsh rhetoric over immigration." ...he would create a bipartisan panel to determine how many visas should be granted for workers already in the United States and those who might follow... [and the buried lead] "Imagine 12 million people who are already here coming out of the shadows to become new taxpayers...[Posted on 04/21/2013 1:52:42 PM PDT by SoConPubbie]
Rand Paul needs to walk a fine line here- it’s one thing to reach out to voters who haven’t traditionally voted with Republicans (provided it’s not pandering and selling out), and to attack the stuck-in-mud, empty-headed GOP-e... but it’s a different thing to simply become the latest version of McCain-Peter King-Colon Powell (i.e., the type of person that the MSM loves to invite on the Sunday shows because they will serve up some juicy anti-Republican sound bites that help Dems win elections).
Exactly my view.
Even if we were to dream that they could beat a Dem in a general election, its insanity to think that they would win the GOP primary that selected Dole, McCain and Romney.(who Republicans here told me they were all the most electable.)
A Walker can beat a Christie with his record, especially after he wins again this November.
Look at the losers who went up against Romney in 2012.
Having sole accomplishments being things that lost, like filibusters, is a recipe for disaster.
Then you should probably change your tagline.
And I think Walker would make a hell of a running mate for Ted Cruz.
60% of Latino women, 90% of black women and 60% of young women vote Democrat and its not because of abortion. They just trend that way on a lot of issues. So that is a huge chunk of the women vote that the GOP wont get a majority of any time soon. If you look at Romney got with white women over 30 Im sure it has improved since McCain with voters that are actually potentially flippable. I think McCain actually did better with the GOP base because he was a war hero, opposed abortion and gay marriage. Also McCain losing in a landslide meant he got some pity votes.
In 2010 the GOP did better amongst whites than any party for 100 years. Bill Clinton won bigger than Obama.
Wrong. Obama's promise of a "backdoor route to gun control" gave us Fast and Furious.
Connecting the War on Guns & Drugs [my title]
All the BS about a "river of iron" going to Mexicn drug cartels was about common semiautomatic rifles, so called "assault weapons." The war on drugs was the excuse. Others have written about it better than I.
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